Thread: JollaMobile : Jolla continues Nokia's excellent work on #MeeGo based smartphones
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lma is offline lma
2012-07-15 , 01:42
Posts: 2,802 | Thanked: 4,491 times | Joined on Nov 2007
#610
Originally Posted by w00t View Post
Do you see Canonical or Microsoft producing hardware (successfully)? I don't. They produce software for OEMs to install.
So does Mer ;-)

Jolla is seemingly intending on being both a software company and an OEM. And that's why OEMs don't need to differentiate on "task switchers" - they don't work on them at all, for the most part. They take software that someone else has written, put it on their own hardware, optionally with some of what they consider "value added extras" (mostly crapware), and sell it off.
That's kind of the point, the software is a commodity. Even on the mobile side, Android made it happen (and MeeGo might've as well under better conditions). The source of osso-backup (to pick a recent example) isn't a valuable trade secret and treating it as such just gets in the way.

Why should another OEM pay for software people, when they can take what (say) Jolla produce, slap it on the same hardware, and sell it cheaper - or offer other services, better support/warranty conditions etc - due to a lower cost as a result of not having to pay those software people?
Having those software people gives certain advantages, such as reputation, being able to support the software better, having advance knowledge and perhaps even influence on development roadmaps, etc. RedHat is doing better than ever despite their bits being also available from Oracle or CentOS.

Let companies talk together, make a licensing deal that says they either pay for the right to use it, or contribute efforts.
Essentially that's what the various Qt licencing options offer :-)

Originally Posted by mikecomputing View Post
Actually where treated as idiots on the PC markets too.
Not my experience. I can go out today and chose a PC from literally hundreds of vendors, in all sorts of form factors, with all sorts of specs, peripherals etc (some even tailor-made), and run whichever OS I want on it.

People usually argued that on "embedded" hardware that's not possible, but in a time when almost all HW is ARM and almost every OSs is Linux is that still the case? Why can't I buy a device that can run Android, and MeeGo, and Tizen, etc if the hardware adaptation is for the most part common?